The public is welcome to attend the annual meeting of Woods Hole Science and Technology Education Partnership. Dr. Buessler is compiling a comprehensive dataset on marine radiation levels in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In January of this year, he launched a crowdsourcing campaign to cover the cost of the ongoing collection of seawater samples at 24 locations along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Canada, down the West Coast of the US and out to the Hawaiian islands.

While Dr. Buesseler does not expect radiation levels to be high enough in the ocean or in seafood to be of concern for human health as the plume spreads 5,000 miles across the Pacific, he believes the situation demands careful, consistent monitoring. There is no US government plan to monitor the radiation levels in the ocean along the US coastline.

Dr. Buesseler, who is director of the WHOI Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, is posting all of the current radiation level data online at ourradioactiveocean.org

At this Annual Meeting of WHSTEP, in addition to Dr. Buessler’s presentation, teachers and students from local schools will present highlights of recent WHSTEP projects. This meeting is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.